What advice for a career change?

[JMG]

I'm not an electrician, but is the breaker in the breaker box tripped? If so, you may have too many outlets on that on breaker or drawing too much power through that breaker. Just a guess.

 

[Jamen]

No breakers were tripped. My dad tripped them all today just to make sure. He is going to pull the outlet and see if there is power to the outlets so maybe they went bad?

 

[Flatland Crusoe]

Industrial Electricians are in pretty high demand a lot of places and it pays competitively. Even more so if your trouble shooting skills and PLC experience is good. In management meetings we constantly discuss the growing shortages of industrial trades.

Electricians pulling wire in houses and swapping out light fixture rely pretty heavily on speed to be profitable but is a very different from industrial stuff.

 

[maxx]

I do not mean to get off topic here but since I see heart of a hunter in an electrician maybe you could help answer this question or anyone else out there.

A few days ago my dad asked me if I noticed the microwave was off. The GFCI tripped that it was plugged into so he tripped it and it worked. Last night I was using it and it worked fine. I went to use it again and it was dead. This time I could not reset it. Come to find out another outlet in the kitchen was not working but there was still another one that worked. the two that are not working are on separate breakers. All the lights work fine just these two outlets.

It is a pretty old house and the wiring is probably dated. hopefully my dad can get it going today may try and replace the outlets first.

Thanks for any tips

Jamen

I can help with this. All outlets in kitchen's must be GFCI but if you look at your kitchen they are not all individual GFCI outlets. You can wire them in series. Therefore the first one has the trip unit but all the downstream receptacles are protected by the GFCI outlet. If you cant get it to reset then you wont get the other ones to work.

Few things it could be. Bad GFCI outlet. Therefore you have to replace the outlet which shouldn't be that hard.

The other thing is it could be the ground fault is still there and the outlet wont let you reset. Therefore you have a short to ground somewhere. Unplug everything connected to that circuit and try to reset. If it resets something plugged in is faulty. If it doesn't reset go back to option 1.

 

[maxx]

Industrial Electricians are in pretty high demand a lot of places and it pays competitively. Even more so if your trouble shooting skills and PLC experience is good. In management meetings we constantly discuss the growing shortages of industrial trades.

Electricians pulling wire in houses and swapping out light fixture rely pretty heavily on speed to be profitable but is a very different from industrial stuff.

You can go back to school to be an engineer but I will warn you it isn't an easy path. I know a few guys that have done.

The math will kill you unless you were great at it before. Engineering is simply a math degree applied in the different disciplines. When you take that much time off of school it is really hard to get through. The math is the most difficult thing for most engineering students to understand. I went into engineering because I loved math.

The other pitfall I saw was being in the field and being practical doesn't necessary transfer over to being a good engineer/designer. Hard to explain this one but you have a lot of mental pitfalls of how stuff should be done in the field compared to how you design it and put it on paper. I have a good friend that was a licensed electrician and then went back to school and became a EE. It really took him a longtime to transfer the skills and get it.

Not to mention you really don't have to have the degree to be a designer which is similar. You could go the route I wrote about and go work for a consulting engineer as a construction manager or designer.

I guess I should have asked questions before making statements. What is your goals? Tired of dealing with the pain of running a business, More money, more freedom, out of the construction industry.

The building/construction industry has been great to my family and I am very fortunate. My dad was a fitter and he pushed me into engineering because of my math skills. Fortunately it also fit my personality. It is a great field to be in. I have two boys they are 11 and 9. My 11 year old is a very intelligent kid tops at everything he doesn't but his brain doesn't process info like and engineer. My 9 year old is smart also but his brain is better for math and he processes information like an engineer. It is funny that I can pick that you at such a young age.

 

[Jamen]

I can help with this. All outlets in kitchen's must be GFCI but if you look at your kitchen they are not all individual GFCI outlets. You can wire them in series. Therefore the first one has the trip unit but all the downstream receptacles are protected by the GFCI outlet. If you cant get it to reset then you wont get the other ones to work.

Few things it could be. Bad GFCI outlet. Therefore you have to replace the outlet which shouldn't be that hard.

The other thing is it could be the ground fault is still there and the outlet wont let you reset. Therefore you have a short to ground somewhere. Unplug everything connected to that circuit and try to reset. If it resets something plugged in is faulty. If it doesn't reset go back to option 1.

I appreciate the help I will have my dad check that out or I will when I get home from work. I am thinking it is a bad switch he unplugged everything and it still would not reset. I do appreciate the help guys!